You may have reached that stage of self-consciousness when one begins to feel unhappy about being handicapped in one way or the other...Here are a few things I’d like to say about this:

1. Everybody feels that way, even grown-ups, and even the most mature people cannot avoid it sometimes, so there’s nothing abnormal about it. But it becomes the source of much abnormality if you let it go out of hand...

This is the nub: take responsibility for yourself. It starts by asking – have I done enough, have I done my best (doesn’t matter whether it is more or less than someone else’s best) before beginning to blame my supposed handicaps or other people’s misdeeds for my failures? I assure you that as a teacher I have found again and again that laziness and timidity are far more often the reasons for failure than stupidity...One never knows what one’s real handicap is before one has tried with all one’s might to overcome it! Look around yourself – the reality is that so many people, apparently very badly disabled, have worked miracles by dint of sheer dogged courage: lame people have climbed mountains, deaf people have composed wonderful music, Helen Keller did so much more than millions of ‘normal’ women have done, Roosevelt ruled a nation and brought it safely through a depression and a world war, David fought Goliath and won (Ralph Nader vs. General Motors is one 20th-century version of the story), Stephen Hawking amazed the world from his wheelchair, Einstein and Dr. Fred Epstein and Tagore were branded ‘problem children’ or mentally deficient by their schoolteachers, yet they went on to become superstars in their chosen lines of work and left ‘footprints on the sands of time’! They set themselves firm goals and slogged away until the goals were attained: that’s it. If they could, why can’t you?...